As of Friday afternoon, falling stocks look to pull the S&P 500 to its biggest weekly loss in more than a month. Contributing to the fall were investors pulling money from the market in anticipation of the Federal Reserve cutting its stimulus in the fall. “It’s been a combination of tapering and just trying to digest the new highs,” Chris Bouffard, chief investment officer of the Mutual Fund Store in Overland Park, Kansas, said. “It’s been a slow news week. It’s just a matter of the normal digestion process and people trying to get comfortable with how quickly and how far we’ve come.”

Oil rallied Friday, boosted by unrest in the Middle East and increasing Chinese demand. Market Watchers reported that the rally was partly created by a rush to invest in the fuel source before the weekend. “It doesn’t seem like you want to sell the market now — a lot of big traders are long in the front month, and you don’t want to go against that,” said Richard Ilczyszyn, the chief market strategist and founder of Chicago’s iitrader.com LLC.

An indicator of currency volatility fell to a three-month low, as Japan’s national debt reached one quadrillion yen and the yen rallied against the dollar. “It’s a repricing of taper expectations,” Joe Manimbo, a market analyst in Washington at Western Union Business Solutions, a unit of Western Union Co., said. “Investors have ratcheted expectations for the Fed to act in September and moved up the likelihood of action in December.”